


Lady Chaos

by chewysugar



Category: Marvel
Genre: American Politics, Anti-Donald Trump, Assassination, BAMF Natasha Romanov, Black Widow - Freeform, Catharsis, Character Study, Explosions, Female Anti-Hero, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-20 17:24:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9502319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chewysugar/pseuds/chewysugar
Summary: It's just another target. But to Natasha, it's personal. She'd made herself one promise after leaving the enemy: no matter what the cost, she would never again sit back and allow fascism to corrupt liberty.





	

Natasha had seen this kind of thing before, only back then she’d been observing through the guileless eyes of a child. In those days, her life was one of greys and reds: from the cloudy skies to the unforgiving waters of the Okhta, to her own russet hair and the blood that stained the snow banks whenever she’d dared walk to school alone. She’d been too young to understand that the strictures she and her family had lived under were wrong—inhuman. And she’d certainly been too young to fathom the possibility that things would get worse—that they _always_ got worse.

For though it had been decades since she’d been taken from her home and molded into the perfect assassin, she could still remember it like it was yesterday. Could still taste the blood in her mouth after being made to endure brutal beatings—still hear the screams of the other girls as they begged for mercy.

But not her. Never her. Natasha Romanov’s hair may have been like a fire, but inside she’d made herself perfect ice. The Avengers had chipped away at the glacier surrounding her heart, but they could never return it to the beating flesh that it had once been.

As Natasha strolled along the empty path, unseasonable warm winds whipping the long, blonde wig she’d elected to wear, around her face, she wondered if maybe she’d have done what she’d just walked away from if she had never joined S.H.I.E.L.D. and The Avengers. The Soviet intelligences that she’d sworn fealty to had always had it in for anything that wasn't red enough, certainly. But Natasha had been taught to respect her enemies back then—that they were a necessary evil: for without them, where would Stalin, Lenin and the KGB truly stand? What would they have to do with their time beside sail down the Danube and drink vodka?

In her days killing for the other side, she’d only ever struck at the tendons and nerves that would lead to an enemy's eventual collapse—things that could be repaired, positions that could be refilled with men and women maybe lesser, but still functioning. She’d been taught to cripple with her kills, so that the enemy could fight another day and give substance to her very existence. That was the way it was supposed to be—the natural way.

But nothing was natural. Nothing made sense anymore, not even the weather. The strict Orthodoxy she’d grown up under had long since been stripped away, but the threads had always been there, sticky and grasping like a spider’s web. And they’d always dictated that there was some greater order to things—that God could be depended on as the only thing in the universe that made any sense.

Now, Natasha knew that there was no God. Not even that Asgardians could have foreseen the sheer stupidity of the trajectory that the human race had decided to let itself follow. The only gods that Natasha knew were Eris and Dysnomia: discord and lawlessness--the complete antithesis to the notion that anything ever made any sense.

She stopped near the end of the path—a famous path that many had walked before. Behind and around her the white sandstone building stood against the unnatural warmth of the wind, monuments to men and ideals that no longer existed. Natasha checked her watch. Two minutes to go. If she strained her ears over the wicked wind, she could even hear the battalion of cars leaving the building far at the other end of the green.

As pleased as she felt with herself for having gone behind the eyes of everyone—S.H.I.E.L.D. and The Avengers included—she couldn’t help but feel a loss of something. It had been growing in profundity since the beginning of the previous year, and had come to a sort of head in November. For someone who’d seen nations rise and fall and pick themselves up again, it surprised her that she could feel something akin to heartbreak at the loss of something as stupid as an ideal.

If her old superiors had seen the state she’d been in since that day, they’d have sent her to the torture chambers for her weakness—for allowing herself to even let in the smallest ray of hope over the past eight years. She felt like a fool for ever believing that things could change for the better, and nobody made a fool out of the Black Widow.

Nobody made a fool out of the Black Widow and got away with it, at least.

One minute to go. Glancing over her shoulder, Natasha saw the sleek, black SUV’s driving down the almost deserted street. She scowled and moved on, keeping her pace even in the highly unlikely case that anyone was watching her. She’d been going over the heads of the most elite security in the world for nearly three months and nobody had stopped her yet. Either she really was just that good at what she did, or Fury really was just too preoccupied and trusting.

That, or he wanted this as much as Natasha and a large portion of society did.

The thought of Fury commending Natasha for what was about to be the most blatant act of treason in history was enough to make Natasha laugh, and she did. It was all so ridiculous: what was going to happen in less than thirty seconds, what had become of the world in the last calendar year, and what people had thought of it all.

But the most amusing thing of all was that she, Natasha Romanov, had surprised herself by not being as closed off to emotion as she’d thought all these years. Something had affected her, had gotten under her skin—had made her furious and hopeless and despairing all at once. It had brought her back to a time in her life when she’d lived in a country where a man could simply disappear for the heinous crime of telling the truth to the people; where a woman's agency was only non-existent, but the lack of it almost law; where boys could be beaten to death for kissing other boys and the police would look the other way; where archaic tyranny was the modern norm. She hated being reminded of that, least of all in a place where it shouldn't exist.

Ten seconds now. Natasha wanted to stop and look back towards the street where the fireworks would go off, but it wouldn’t be wise. As far as the security cameras here were concerned—as far as the cameras that had seen the svelte blonde woman back in the big, white building far behind were concerned—she was just a member of the press who'd been interviewed by top security and sent packing.

That’s what the cameras would _see_ , at least.

A bombastic blast split the silent morning, followed by another, and then another. Two more blasts finished the chaotic symphony; by that time people had already started screaming. Not unnecessary causalities. Natasha had made sure that the convoy’s path had been going down a street of mostly abandoned buildings under construction before she'd gone in for the jugular.

Only then did she allow herself to turn around. After all, anyone walking this path would be bound to look over their shoulder in surprise. But the security cameras wouldn’t see the smirk that graced the blonde woman’s plump limps—wouldn’t catch the feeling of vindictive pleasure that rippled through her body.

Plumes of black smoke were already rising into the air from several blocks over. Sirens split the quiet, but by the time the emergency vehicles reached the twisted, melting remains of the five SUV’s, they would find nobody left alive inside. It was a simple but effective method of pinning the latest micro-explosive to the suit cuff of each of the men Natasha had spoken to before being turned away. She’d followed them for weeks, ensuring that they were, in fact, the ones to be accompanying her real targets as hired security.

She supposed she could have just gone for the highest of them all and spared the mess. But Natasha had thought about it long and hard—obsessed over it in a way she never had before. This wasn’t a case where she could stand to cut her losses and settle for crippling. Hell, it wasn’t a case where cutting off the head and hoping that the body would die would suffice. No, in this particular instance, the entire body had been too evil—to tyrannical—to be allowed to carry on.

And perhaps it was a hydra. Perhaps something more heinous would come of this. But, as she watched the flames and the smoke climb higher over the rooftops, Natasha realized that she didn’t give a damn anymore what the consequences were. People hadn’t seemed to care when they’d been exercising their so-called “right to democracy.” She’d seen too many evil, old men tell the rest of society what to do, and in this case, a veritable bastion of them had broken into the land of freedom overnight and violated liberty itself in the most degrading way.

It didn’t matter what happened now. She’d done her part, and done it freely. Chaos would reign as it always had. But at least in this, she’d infected the bloodstream of the world with something far stronger than poison.

The Black Widow had bitten in, and poisoned the world with an idea—an idea that could never die: an idea that monsters would never sit in seat of power without dire consequences.

The wind shifted, sending the acrid stench of smoke and burning gasoline Natasha’s way. She turned, her head down, and stepped off the beaten path, a triumphant smile on her face. Then she turned a corner and disappeared from sight, history happening in all its chaotic beauty at the smoldering scene behind her. 


End file.
